


Love Born in the Eye of the Storm

by ScribblerQueen1



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Flirting, Christophe Plays Matchmaker, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Getting Together, M/M, Social Media, Yuri Plisetsky Is a Katsuki Yuuri Fan, snowstorm AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27110323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribblerQueen1/pseuds/ScribblerQueen1
Summary: After a snowstorm cancels their return flight and all the hotels are overbooked, Yuuri decides to detour home to wait it out. He offers to let other stranded skaters stay at Yuu-topia, he just didn't know one of them was Victor Nikiforov.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Mila Babicheva/Sara Crispino
Comments: 34
Kudos: 723
Collections: Little Red's YoI fics: frozen Library





	Love Born in the Eye of the Storm

Yuuri sighs as he looks out at the snowstorm that had appeared overnight.

The storm had caused the cancelation of nearly all the international flights out of Fukuoka Airport and the ones that weren’t canceled were completely booked by people attempting to take an indirect flight to their destination. On top of that all the flights that were cancelled while they slept had caused stranded people to book up all the reservations at their hotel and he and his coach had no choice but to start looking for another hotel while they waited to hear back from their travel agent. Which is basically what everyone in Fukuoka was attempting to do now.

This was really the cherry on top of his terrible mood after placing fifth at the grand prix final the other day and then having to attend the boring banquet last night while trying to avoid social interaction and attempting to not embarrass himself in front of his figure skating idol, Victor Nikiforov. Even though it was his first grand prix final, he didn’t feel like he deserved to talk to his idol after placing fifth. Maybe if he had done better, he would’ve tried.

Celestino comes back after having walked away to hear his phone conversation with the travel agent better, he shakes his head at Yuuri.

“They said that all the international flights have been canceled for the next three days and that most of the flights after that are already booked. We’re looking at a flight a week from now at best and that’s assuming that the storm has cleared up enough and the flight isn’t cancelled, they’re still looking for a hotel room. How’s your search going?”

Yuuri shakes his head in response.

“No luck so far. I’ve started looking at listings just outside of Fukuoka but it looks like they’re overbooked as well.” He says looking at the listings on his phone.

Celestino is scrolling on his phone as well and then turns the screen to him. “What about this one, they have rooms available but we’d have to take the train but at this rate it’s our best option.”

Yuuri scans the hotel listing and grimaces at the location. “That’s a nearly two hour train ride, Hasetsu is only an hour away from us and that would be a better option.”

“Okay then, why don’t we do that? I mean your family owns an inn right? It’d save us money too.” 

He pauses, that’s actually a reasonable idea. Yuuri knows that he hasn’t been home since he left for Detroit three years ago and that he wanted to wait until he had won something that could prove he hadn’t wasted his time. But it would be a stupid thing to argue when they need a hotel room for a week minimum and they have a simple solution in front of them.

“Yeah, I’ll call my mom and let her know.”

Before he can do that, Yuuri hears someone call his name from across the hotel lobby. He looks up and spots Christophe Giacometti waving at him.

“Yuuri! I’m glad you’re still here! We’ve been trying to get hotel rooms somewhere and we’re running into some difficulties. Everyone seems to be stuck here until the storm blows over and I thought that you might have better luck.”

He’s kind of surprised that Chris thought to ask him considering how standoffish Yuuri can be, not that has ever stopped Chris from pretty much anything. They’d known each other since they were in juniors and he’s probably the only skater besides Phichit that Yuuri would consider himself close with, mostly because of Chris being, well Chris. 

“We’ll, we’re planning on heading to my hometown. We can’t get a flight out for at least a week so it seemed like the better option because so far the only available hotel we found is a train ride farther than the one there, so.” Yuuri tells him their plans.

“Oh, so you’re going to stay with your family? That’s nice. How far is that other hotel? Is there a chance you could help the rest of the skaters here figure out somewhere? We’ve been having a lot of trouble communicating, it would really help if we had someone that spoke Japanese.” He pleads with Yuuri.

“Oh, sure!” He goes to pull up the listing that he remembers Celestino showing him on his phone as Chris looks over his shoulder. Just as he pulls up the hotel website he sees a big red notice say _NO AVAILABILITY._ A glance at the map shows the hotel is nearby another airport and it’s just as likely it was flooded by people with cancelled flights.

“Oh no, is that the one?” Chris says as he reads the English translation also printed below the kanji on the site.

Yuuri frowns knowing that he doesn’t want his fellow skaters to be out of a place to stay. Then it clicks, when Chris had asked about the other hotel he’d completely skipped over the fact that his parents owned an inn. Tourism had been down in Hasetsu and they rarely ever had overflow from cancelled flights, so it was very likely that there were rooms available for anyone that needed them.

“Wait a minute, I have a better idea. I can’t believe it slipped my mind.” Yuuri goes back to what he’d been doing when Chris had called out to him. He hit the button for his mother’s contact and put the phone to his ear listening to it ring.

“Ah, _Okaa-san? No, the flight got canceled_ .” He pauses. “ _I was planning on coming home until we can get a flight but are there some other skaters that need a place to stay, does the onsen have room_?”

Yuuri nods along to his mother’s response while Chris looks on a bit confused and waits patiently for him to tell him what’s going on. He pulls the phone away from his face to talk to Chris.

“How many people?” He asks.

“Ah, I’ll go get a head count.” Chris runs off back to the area that he appeared from and Yuuri waits patiently, catching up with his mother in the meantime.

“At least sixteen skaters and their coaches need rooms, some said they would share rooms, so at least maybe we could all fit into a few rooms?” Chris suggests once he’s back with the head count and Yuuri nods, while waving off the concern.

“ _At least sixteen, not including Celestino. Ah, that’s great! Thanks mom. I’ll text Mari once we get train tickets so she knows when to come pick us up at the station.”_ Yuuri hangs up once he’s confirmed that there’s enough extra rooms at Yuu-topia.

“What did they say? Did you get a hotel?” Chris asks him hopefully.

“My parents run an inn, my mom said that there’s room for everyone if they need a place to stay.” Yuuri confirms for him.

“Oh, wow! You’ve never mentioned that before, what is it like?” He’s intrigued, mostly because Yuuri never opens up about himself. He’d never thought about what his family might be like but now he can definitely imagine Yuuri’s parents being a sweet old couple running an inn, the imagery fits his quiet personality.

“It’s nice, kind of small, but it’s a traditional style inn, There’s also a hot springs bath area. There used to be a couple more in my town but they’ve closed down because of the lack of tourism, my family’s inn is the only one left.”

Chris smiles at him. “Hot springs! That sounds lovely, especially with this weather. Let’s go tell everyone else.”

Yuuri and Celestino grab their bags and head over with Chris to where the other stranded skaters have been waiting on news about a hotel.

“Guys! Great news, Yuuri got us rooms at a hot springs inn!” Chris announces to the group and Yuuri hears them cheer from up ahead. 

“How’d he get rooms? Everything is booked.” The man that Yuuri recognizes as Chris’s coach, Josef, asks them.

“My parents own the inn in my hometown, it’s a little ways away but it’s closer than anything that would be available at this point.” Yuuri responds to him.

“That’s so cool!” He turns in shock at the voice he hears. It’s Victor Nikiforov, standing with his coach and a couple of other skaters. It hadn’t occurred to him until this point that one of the skaters that needed a hotel was Victor despite the fact that he knew he was here.

Victor throws his arms around Yuuri in a hug, thanking him, talking a hundred miles an hour about whatever because he’s died of shock at this point. He can feel his cheeks flush up in embarrassment and Victor’s still clinging to him and he wonders if he’s going to let go at some point, not that this isn’t a long life dream but he’s not sure how long he can handle this before he does something wrong.

“Victor, let the poor boy go so we can go.” Yakov chides his skater and Victor releases him and he feels like he can breathe again. Chris gives him a mischievous knowing look and he shoots him a quick glare.

“So how do we get to this inn?” Another skater, Cao-Bin, he remembers asks.

“Ah, it’s about an hour train ride. I know it’s kind of inconvenient but from the looks of it, it’s the only thing available with the snowstorm and canceled flights.” Yuuri responds to him.

“That’s fine, it’s not like any of us had luck finding anything.” Chris reassures him and then the group heads off with Yuuri leading the way to the train station.

He helps everyone purchase their tickets for the next train to Hasetsu, which by the time they’re done purchasing them and making it to the platform while the train is five minutes away. Yuuri takes this opportunity while everyone is distracted to pull out his phone to text Mari.

“ _MARI!!! EMERGENCY!!! I ACCIDENTALLY INVITED VICTOR NIKIFOROV TO THE ONSEN!!!”_

He texts it as fast as he can, hoping she sees it right away.

“ _Congratulations, have you wooed him yet?_ ” She responds and he huffs.

“ _What part of emergency do you not get?_ ” 

“ _What’s the problem? You’re going to have your idol staying with us, isn’t that your dream?_ ” He huffs once more.

“ _The posters._ ”

“ _Ah, planning on getting him into your bed already? Don’t want him to see the shrine?_ ” He really hates his sister sometimes.

“ _Just take them down and hide them, please. Chris is also coming and he will undoubtedly try to invade my room and cause trouble, so please._ ” Yuuri begs her.

“ _Giacometti?_ ” She asks him.

“ _Yes._ ” 

“ _Fine, you owe me. How long until your train is here?_ ” Mari asks him in return.

“ _Train is almost here, so an hour._ ”

“ _Alright, see you soon._ ” 

He sighs in relief and looks to see the train coming. “This is the train.” He calls out to the others and they all pick up their luggage and successfully get on the train without much issue.

The train is thankfully not crowded because of the storm, so they can all sit down for the long ride. The other skaters are excited about being on the train, remarking how different it is from trains in their own countries. One of the coaches sitting across from him catches his attention.

“Katsuki, will the ice rink in your hometown be available for us all to use? Do you think there will be any trouble with getting rink time?” He asks him.

“Ah, no, I’m sure there will be no problem. I’m friends with the family that owns the rink, they’ve always made sure it’s available to me and they’d have no problem opening it up to everyone. I’m sure we can organize a schedule so that there’s not too much overlap.” Yuuri reassures him. 

This seems to relieve all the coaches noticeably, which he understands. Most of the national competitions are coming up now that the grand prix series is over and they’re important for deciding who competes at worlds. It decides whether or they compete for the rest of the season most of the time.

Yuuri tries to relax the rest of the ride, watching out the windows, but he can’t help but keep glancing over at Victor who is happily chatting away with his rinkmates. There’s an announcement over the train speakers, stating that they’re almost at the station and he lets everyone know that this is their stop. The group gathers up their belongings and gets ready to disembark, the doors open and they get off at the platform.

It’s refreshing to see the station after three years of being away, but he’s immediately embarrassed when he realizes that they’ve put up posters of him everywhere. Posters of him with cherry blossoms in the background. A hand claps his back as Chris comes up beside him.

“Wow, Yuuri! Japan really loves their top skater, huh?” He nudges him playfully, looking at all the posters.

“Stop, I’m sure you all have posters too. Besides this is my hometown, of course they do.” Yuuri tries to play it off like it’s no big deal.

“Not as much as this, besides they cheered the loudest for you during the final. The home field advantage must have been pretty nice.” Sara Crispino remarks to him as she takes a picture of the station. “It kind of scared me when you came out and they all cheered like that, they didn’t even cheer for Victor like that.”

He blushes and then he hears his name called, and looks towards the exit where he sees Mari waving.

“Ah, Mari-neechan!” He waves back and he sees that she has Nishigori with her who’s waving as well. She most likely asked to borrow the small bus that Ice Castle has so that they could transport everyone to Yuu-topia.

Nishigori picks him up in a big hug once he gets close enough and teasingly ruffles his head. The display causes others to notice him and before he knows it, he’s swarmed by quite a few people who are congratulating him for making it to the grand prix final and some of the little kids ask him to sign some things. The other skaters are pretty amused by it from the looks on their faces.

“Come on, I’m sure you’re all exhausted from traveling in this weather.” Mari says to the group and they head out to the bus and get their luggage stored below. 

Despite the situation that he’s found himself in, Yuuri is glad to see his home once the bus comes to a stop in front of Yuu-topia. The skaters are cooing over the onsen and the traditional Japanese architecture surrounding them as they come out. It’s the general reaction they get from tourists who are generally used to a more modern look. He stops pulling out luggage when he hears the door open and smiles as he sees his parents.

“Kaa-san, Tou-san, Tadaima.” He greets them, quickly moving to give them hugs.

“Okaerinasai, Yuuri.” His mother greets him back. After she’s done hugging him, she turns to their guests. 

“Welcome everyone, we’re glad to meet you all. I’m Yuuri’s mother Hiroko Katsuki and this is my husband Toshiya.” She greets them in English. 

Barking catches Yuuri off guard as he suddenly remembers the only member of the family that he hasn’t greeted yet. “Vicchan!” He squats down and catches the fluffy poodle in his arms, who immediately begins to cover his face in frantic licks, yipping, unable to contain his excitement and is a vibrating ball of energy. He laughs at the ticklish kisses his dog gives him after his three year absence and presses his face into his fur, hugging the squirming poodle.

“Oh! You have a poodle!” Suddenly Victor Nikiforov is right up next to him again and is cooing at the poodle that shares his name, something that he hadn’t thought about till now.

“Awe! He missed you. So cute!” He pulls out his phone and snaps several pictures before Yuuri can say anything to him. “I have a poodle too! His name is Makkachin, but he’s much bigger than yours.”

Vicchan, noticing the familiar face that had decorated Yuuri’s room for as long as he can probably remember, wiggles out towards Victor, licking his hands and letting him pet him happily.

“Victor! Come get your luggage! I’m not carrying it! You can pet the dog later!” Yakov yells at his student and Victor pouts and whispers promises of coming back to the dog before he goes over and gets his bags and along with everyone else starts carrying them in.

Yuuri sets aside his own bags while carrying Vicchan and then sets the dog down reluctantly to help his parents settle their guests into rooms. Vicchan faithfully follows him around the onsen while he helps show everyone to their rooms. Explaining whatever they need to know before he’s eventually able to go to his own room that’s separate from the guest area. 

It’s odd to see the walls bare but he’d rather not risk one of the skaters coming into his room and seeing all the posters. He notes that they must be in the box that is now underneath his bed that wasn’t before. The bed sheets are missing and he figures his mother took them to freshen them up before he sleeps tonight. Yuuri sets aside the luggage and sits down on the floor patting his legs for Vicchan to come sit and spends some time just enjoying cuddling his dog.

Mari, of course, wanders over to his room and laughs at the sight. “Well we know what family member you missed the most.”

“Of course, Vicchan is the best.” He remarks snuggling his dog even more in response.

“Anyway, mom is making your favorite for everyone, dinner should be in half an hour and our guests decided to go soak in the onsen. In case you want to take a look.” She heavily insinuates a few things with that last comment as she walks away. Yuuri decides not to dignify that with a response.

He gets up, still holding onto Vicchan and unpacks some of his toiletries in order to freshen up before he walks down to the dining area. Yuuri can hear the voices of the other skaters when he gets closer, they sound pretty pleased and he’s glad that they aren’t disappointed by the onsen.

“Ah! Yuuri there you are!” Chris calls out to him. He and everyone else are in the onsen’s yukatas that they have for guests to use after bathing in the hot springs. 

“Yuuri, I’m so jealous that you get to use the hot springs all the time! They’re so nice!” Victor calls out to him after hearing Chris say his name. There’s a chorus of agreements following. “Ah! Your poodle! Can I hold him? What’s his name again? Vicchan?” 

Victor holds out his arms, making a bunch of kissy noises at the poodle who gladly goes over to him and accepts petting from everyone in the vicinity which puts him at ease.

“Dinner should be done soon, I’m going to go check and see if they need help.” Yuuri mentions and the group dismisses him in favor of his dog.

“Mom, do you need any help?” He asks as he enters the kitchen. 

“You don’t really need to, you should just relax with your friends and enjoy being home.” Hiroko tells him but he’s stubborn.

“Still it’s a lot of people. I’ll help plate the dishes.” She just shakes her head at him but doesn’t stop him from scooping rice into bowls while the pork cutlets are finishing. Mari comes in a little after and starts doing the same. His dad brings out drinks for everyone while they get the last of the bowls ready and then they carry them out.

They’ve all moved under the heated kotatsu, talking with each other. Vicchan is deeply enjoying being cuddled by his name sake and Yuuri tries not to stare at them while he puts the bowls down.

“What’s this?” A young blond junior skater asks while looking at the food suspiciously, if Yuuri recalls correctly he’s one of Victor’s rinkmates.

“Yura, don’t be rude.” Yakov chides him, recognizing his all familiar tone.

“It’s Kastudon, a pork cutlet rice bowl with egg and vegetables.” Hiroko answers politely anyway, disregarding his attitude. “It’s Yuuri’s favorite, I thought I’d make it since it’s the first time he’s been home in a while.”

“My name’s Yuri too.” The skater comments in return, eyeing Yuuri before looking back at his food suspiciously. 

“Oh, that’s right, Yuuri you’ve been training in America with Celestino right?” Sara asks him after hearing his mother’s comment.

“Yeah, I train and go to college in Detroit so I haven’t been home to see everyone for a while.” Yuuri admits to them.

“Really, I can’t imagine being that far from Sara. I couldn’t do it.” Michele, Sara’s brother says. Not that he can stand to be apart from her for more than necessary as it is, Yuuri knows that he’s rather over protective of her and he’s well known for being invasive about her interactions with any guy that comes within ten feet of her. He’s always been highly suspicious of Yuuri because Sara was always trying to get him to interact more.

Now that Yuuri is less stressed about Victor Nikiforov being in his childhood home, he’s actually aware of who the other skaters that have come to stay at onsen are. Aside from the Victor, Christophe, Cao-Bin, and the Crispino twins, he’s able to identify Victor’s rink mates Georgi Popovich, Mila Babicheva, and Yakov’s newest student Yuri Plisetsky who is a recent juniors addition. There’s also the Canadian skater JJ, who he remembers as a rinkmate when he first started with Celestino before his parents started coaching him. 

He finds that he’s able to slip into an easy conversation now, here in his home, unlike when he’s in the middle of a competition and avoiding interacting with literally anyone besides his coach out of anxiety. Well, for the most part that is. He’s still barely said a word to Victor, not that the man seems to mind at the moment because he’s been completely enthralled with his poodle nearly the entire time since he’s been here.

Eventually, everyone starts to get tried and they all start to head off to bed. Victor is particularly stubborn about going to sleep because he would rather stay up playing with Vicchan but Yakov scolds him for even thinking about it.

“Yuuri, thank you for letting hog your poodle, I’m sure you’ve missed him more considering how long you’ve been gone. I just get terribly homesick when I’m away from Makkachin for longer than I expect.” Victor apologizes to him as he hands over the poodle, who is pleased to cuddle with Yuuri again.

“No, it’s fine, I understand.” He can feel the heat rise in his cheeks as he speaks back to Victor.

“Alright, goodnight Yuuri and Vicchan too!” He cheerfully waves goodbye to them and then disappears down the hall with his coach.

Yuuri helps his family clean up the mess from dinner before heading to his bedroom for the night and realizes that he’d left his phone sitting on his desk. In his defense he’d had a lot going on and he hadn’t realized that he hadn’t had it. It’s not like he was super into social media unlike a certain roommate of his, currently in Detroit, who’d been blowing up his notifications till now.

He had a couple dozen notifications from Phichit, that in summary, were all very increasing demands of explanation as to how he invited Victor Nikiforov and a couple other half dozen skaters to stay in his hometown. At first he was confused as to how his friend already knew about that because Celestino would never tell him because that would cause Phichit to blow up his phone with notifications and their poor coach already struggled with the technology and wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

However the next thing he spots are several notifications from his barely used Instagram and twitter, notifying him that he’d been tagged in several pictures and followed by the skaters currently staying with him, including Victor. Yeah, there’s no way his friend missed those. 

Yuuri decided to bite the bullet and called Phichit, who must have been waiting and stalking the series of SNS posts that were being made by his guests, waiting for his reply.

“ _OHMYGODHOWDIDYO-_ ” He pulled his face away from his cellphone as Phichit shouted his frantic questions the second he answered. Yuuri waited until he used a bit of common sense to not blow out his ear drums.

“Phichit.”

“ _I’m sorry it’s just how? I know you just both competed in the grand prix final but the last I heard was that you couldn’t make eye contact with him. Just how did you get him to go to Hasetsu and also you made friends? I’m so proud of you!”_ He sighs deeply at how excited Phichit is.

“If you gave me a minute, I could explain.”

“ _Ah! Sorry! Shutting up now, go ahead.”_ Phichit says so that Yuuri will explain what happened.

“Christophe Giacometti came over to me in the hotel because he and the other skaters were having trouble getting new hotel rooms once the storm canceled all the flights. We had already decided to come to Hasetsu and nothing else was available so I offered them rooms here. I only found out afterwards that one of those people was Victor Nikiforov.” Yuuri presses his face into his hand, thinking about how Victor had hugged him.

“ _Oh my god. Only you would accidentally invite Victor Freaking Nikiforov to come stay in your home. But besides that, this is your chance, you could make him fall in love with you. It’s just like one of those hallmark movies!_ ” Phichit declares to him.

“Phichit, no. This is not like a movie. Listen, I have to go to bed. I’ll talk to you again later.” Yuuri makes an excuse to end the conversation before Phichit can get too far.

“ _Alright, but just think about it, okay?_ ”

“Phichit.”

“ _Just think about it._ ”

After he hangs up the phone, he lays in bed with Vicchan lying snuggled up to him, as he scrolled through the Instagram and twitter posts that everyone had made. A majority of the posts were about Hasetsu and Yuu-topia, complementing his hometown and being thankful to Yuuri for helping them out. However the ones that really got to him were Victor’s.

Victor had taken several photos of Yuuri at different points, glorifying him to all of his followers for giving them a place to stay. He’d posted a photo of the train platform with Yuuri’s posters being shown all over, grouped together with a picture of him signing things for the kids at the station.

The caption on the post read: _I can see why they all love @Katsu-Yuu <3 _

The next post was of Yuuri holding Vicchan when they first arrived at Yuu-topia and that was captioned: _I love him more now!! He has a poodle too! Say hello to Vicchan! #Don’tWorryMakka #IStillLoveYou_

There were also a couple of photos from dinner, which he wasn’t sure when Victor took that considering how much he was enjoying the food and cuddling Vicchan. The first was one was a picture of the Kastudon that had been served and then the next was a picture of Yuuri himself enjoying a bite of his own. Underneath those photos he’d written:

_@Katsu-Yuu’s mom made us all his favorite food for dinner! Honestly this is #FamilyGoals. The Katsuki’s have all been so amazing to us all while we’re stuck in Japan. You all need to come to come to #Hasetsu and try their #katsudon it’s delicious._

He’s honestly so embarrassed to read all the nice things that everyone has posted about him and everything, but reading Victor’s is like some sort of fever dream of his wildest imagination. Yuuri falls asleep staring at the posts and thinking about what Victor wrote. 

The next morning Yuuri finds that he’s woken up just as the sun is peering over the horizon. His body is still adjusting to the time zone changes, it benefits him at least, he’s usually not an early riser. He checks the update on the storm and sees that everything is grounded for the foreseeable future still. Most likely Yuuri and Celestino will be abandoning their plans to fly back to Detroit at this rate with nationals so close. It makes no sense to fly back there and then a fly back a day or so later. The only issue is that Phichit is coach-less in the meantime but the other coaches from the skate club look out for him and he can film his practices.

After laying in bed for a bit he gets up, Vicchan isn’t pleased by it but he gets up and follows after him faithfully. The other skaters being here is still stressing him out, so Yuuri decides that he can reduce the stress by starting his workout routine earlier and then head over to Ice Castle. Besides, he hasn’t seen his friends or Minako-sensei yet and he gets excited at the idea of surprising Yuuko even though she knows that he’s back home.

He goes to his closet to see what clothes he left behind that still fit, everything in his suitcase is dirty and he’ll make sure to do laundry later. Yuuri heads downstairs with his workout bag and greets his mother as he grabs a light breakfast before starting off. Vicchan does his routine with him, imitating his stretches and he laughs as he does it and then runs right alongside him on their old familiar route to the rink.

If nothing has changed, Yuuko should already be in the middle of opening up when he gets there. The door is unlocked and he quietly lets himself in, holding the door open for Vicchan to follow. He can hear movement from the skate rental desk and heads over to see who it is.

“Ah, Takeshi, is that you? I could use some help with these boxes.” Yuuko calls out without looking up from the inventory list.

“I’m not him, but I can still help.” Yuuri responds waiting for her response. She gets a confused look on her face and turns to look when her eyes widen.

“Yuuri!” Yuuko is happy to see him of course, she would’ve probably shown up at the train station with her husband if it weren’t for the fact someone still needed to watch the rink. She runs out from the rental area and throws her arms around him in a hug. He holds her back just as tight.

She smiles brightly at him as she releases him and steps back. “Welcome home! I hear you brought some guests?” Yuuko asks, she doesn’t seem to know who. Takeshi probably didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

“Some of the other skaters needed hotels too after everything got canceled and over booked. They’re staying at the onsen until they can fly back.” He informs her and her eyes glow at the information.

“Other skaters? Who? Tell me!” Yuuri shakes his head.

“It’s a surprise, you’ll see. They’ll be coming to the rink at some point, they all have nationals to train for after all.” She squeals loudly in his ear, smacking his arm repeatedly.

“They’ll probably want to discuss rink times and things with you, just prepare yourself.” Yuuri forewarns her, she’ll probably get a little freaked out once she realizes their childhood idol is there.

“Of course! I’ve got so much I need to prepare now! I think Takeshi already went over the ice with the Zamboni last night so you should be good to go, I’ve got to go get paperwork and stuff.” 

She heads over to the back offices and he heads over to a bench and gets his skates on. Vicchan is already chilling in his usual spot at the ice rink by the time he’s ready to hit the ice. The nostalgic feeling of being alone on the ice in his hometown rink washes over him and he feels at peace.

Yuuri starts off with compulsive figures getting back into the feel of the rink and after he’s done them for a while, he starts to work on his short program and free skate working on the parts that he’d messed up during the final.

It’s therapeutic and he finds himself doing better than he had been doing prior this season. Maybe he should’ve come home sooner? If he had planned to come in a few days earlier and done this, maybe he would have placed higher. Too late now, the grand prix final is over but nationals are still right around the corner.

He hears some happy barks come from Vicchan and comes out of a spin and looks toward what has his attention and sees Celestino walk in with the other coaches. He walks over to the rink wall where his glasses and skate guards are, grabbing them he heads off the ice.

Yuuri is breathing a bit hard but greets them nonetheless. “I’ll go find Yuuko for you guys.” Knowing that they want to handle the business matters ahead of time. He heads over to the office area and knocks on the door. Yuuko and Nishigori are both in there and they look like they have the paperwork prepared.

“Yuuko, the coaches are here.” 

“We’ll be right out.” Yuuri nods and then heads back, going over to talk with Celestino. 

Yuuko is quick to gather the coaches attention and starts discussing rink use terms and the contracts for rink fees and such. Yuuri gets back to working on his skate routine with Celestino overseeing him now. Some time later, they seem to have everything settled and Yuuri comes off the ice feeling the natural soreness of his workout. He figures that he’ll head to the ballet studio after this as he reaches down to pet his dog, he should mention that to the coaches too.

Now the other skaters start to wander in through the doors, probably having just finished up their other workout routines before their coaches gave them the all clear to come to the rink.

“Yuuri! There you are!” Chris calls out to him and he waves back. “Are you already finished?”

“For now, I’m planning on doing some cross training and then coming back later.” He informs Chris.

Victor pops up from behind them, greeting them cheerfully. “Good morning Yuuri! Hello Vicchan!”

Yuuri can see Yuuko’s head whip around at the sound of Victor’s voice and watches as her jaw drops open and she freezes as she realizes who exactly is here. He’s broken her.

“Good morning. Hey, can I introduce you guys to my friend? She and her husband run the rink.” He asks them as the other skaters make their way over. 

“Sure!” Yuuri gets a chorus of agreements and they walk over to her, where she’s still frozen in her spot.

“This is my childhood friend, Yuuko Nishigori.” He introduces her to them and she squeaks. Yuuri can see her dying inside.

“It’s nice to meet you, Yuuko! We’re-” 

“Victor Nikiforov and Christophe Giacometti.” She cuts them off. “I’m a very big fan, we’ve been skating fans since we were kids.” 

Yuuri blushes and looks away when she mentions that, Chris grins and looks over at him bumping their elbows. He tries to discreetly swat him away but Victor turns a bit and catches a glance at the interaction, his eyes brighten a bit.

“Ah, is that so?” 

Yuuri manages getting through introductions and pleasantries before swiftly taking off for the ballet studio. He has to ring Minako’s phone to check that she’s awake and can open it for him but despite disturbing her quiet morning she’s pleased to see him again. She does however spend the entire time he’s in her studio teasing him about Victor Nikiforov, she’d seen the SNS posts from the day before.

“You’ve gotten so bold Yuuri, already inviting him to meet the family. It’s been what, a few days?”

“Minako-sensei, please.”

His pleas go unheard by her and so he tries to get by ignoring her not that it works well. Eventually he finishes up in the studio and heads back to the onsen to eat lunch. Yuuri finds that everyone else has paused for lunch as well.

Vicchan runs ahead inside and goes up to Victor who is preoccupied with a conversation between his rinkmates and is surprised by his fluffy little head shoving itself under his arm for pets.

“Ah! Oh! Look who’s back!” Victor gently smushes Vicchan’s face in between his hands and presses his face up to his, laughing when he receives a few licks and boops his nose.

“Yuuri! Come sit next to me!” Victor calls out to him once he looks up. He can feel the heat rise in his cheeks and Yuuri tries to force it down as he walks over.

“You’re coming back to the rink after lunch right? Yura needs help with his step sequences and everyone says yours are the best.” He’s shocked to hear the words come from Victor’s mouth.

Yuri slams his hands down on the table. “I don’t need help! What are you talking about? You old man, you’re delusional!” He denies flat out.

“That’s not what Yakov said.” Mila pipes up. “You’re just embarrassed because he’s your idol.” She turns to Yuuri and mock whispers to him. “He has a poster of you, we’ve all seen it even though he denies it.”

“I don’t! Stop telling lies!” The young skater is furiously red as he denies it. This initiates a volley of accusations and denial between Yuri and his teammates.

Yuuri just sits there with confusion plastered on his face, feeling like he’d drunk some of that sketchy alcohol punch mix that makes its ugly appearance at frat parties on campus when people are desperate enough and then dreamed himself into the 5th dimension. Yuri Plisetsky, rinkmate of Victor Nikiforov and highly speculated future successor of the Russian reign, should not have a poster of him.

Wait, has this been Victor’s only impression of him until now? That Japanese skater that shares the same name as his teammate, that said teammate admires and has a poster of and they all tease him about. Crap, that just sounds like him and Phichit at this point about his posters of Victor which are currently hidden under his bed. Maybe he should say something? He knows how he would feel if it were him in this situation.

“It’s okay, I’m sure there’s skaters we all admire. I mean it’s how I got into skating.” Yuuri tries to reassure the younger skater.

Yuri stops yelling at his rinkmates and looks at him hesitantly. “So if I allegedly have a poster of you, you wouldn’t think it was weird?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” He responds kindly.

Then Chris unexpectedly chimes in. “I mean it would be hard for you to, I have sources that you have some posters of your own.”

Yuuri whips around to look at the swiss skater. “What do you mean by that?” Phichit better not have said anything or his hamsters will be orphans when he returns to Detroit.

“Nothing, your room is cute by the way.”

“Did you snoop in my room!?” Yuuri asks, his voice squeaking, covering his face in embarrassment.

“I did no such thing, I just follow your roommate on insta, he’s not always so careful about what’s in his background. So there’s more here?” He can’t look up, if he looks Victor in the face he will read right through him.

“It’s okay Yuuri, I had posters of Stephane Lambiel if it makes you feel better.” Victor whispers to him. “And so did Chris.”

It’s weirdly reassuring to hear that coming from Victor but now he’s concerned about what else slipped by Phichit. He just hopes he can get through this week.

When they head back to Ice Castle, Yuri does ask for his help with his step sequences and Yuuri has no problem with doing so. The entire afternoon practice is such an experience.

The Russian team is its own form of organized chaos. One would think they would be more disciplined considering they have some of the world’s top skaters but no. Yakov seems to be constantly yelling at his skaters trying to get to stick to the training he’d assigned but none of them can go more than five minutes before deviating into whatever pleases them.

Mila makes jibes and teases Yuri who starts fights with her in turn. Georgi is very dramatic and gets very caught up in his own emotions, it distracts him greatly from the technical aspects that he’s supposed to be focusing on. Victor isn’t even working on his program and he can tell because he’s basically memorized both. He also keeps pulling out his phone.

On top of that JJ is, well JJ. Yuuri knows his personality pretty well from when he was under Celestino, he hasn’t changed much. Although the rivalry with Yuri is a new thing, if it’s a rivalry? Yuri seems more irritated than anything by him.

Chris seems to be moderately focused on his programs but he is definitely egging on Victor’s mischief and goofing off. Yakov is yelling at both of them and it seems that Josef was expecting because he doesn’t have any problems with him yelling at his skater.

On top of that, Michele is trying very hard to keep Sara from interacting with practically everyone, not that it stops her. She’s still very much on her Yuuri needs more friends agenda and is pushing him to interact with all the skaters. Her brother ends up being very conflicted because Yuuri is technically their host and it would be rude to say something but he also considers Yuuri to be a ‘threat’, whatever that means. Besides something seems to be going on with Sara and Mila but he hasn’t pieced that together yet. 

Cao-Bin makes eye contact with Yuuri at one point and they share a look. They’ve been raised to be more socially conservative based on their respective cultures, for them this is just weird. He figured that he'd be more adjusted to this because he’s spent the last few years training in America and has rink mates from all over but it’s weirder with it happening at the Ice Castle.

Once the day is done, Yuuri decides that he needs to go soak in the onsen. He hasn’t gotten the chance yet since he got back. It’ll be a nice reward for himself. He gets outside to the hot springs and in thirty seconds is reminded why he didn’t immediately use the onsen.

“There’s figure skating's greatest ass.” Followed directly by a slap from Chris.

“Chris!”

“What, you’ve never stopped me before?” He should’ve never encouraged this behavior because now as he looks back to see Victor is right behind him. Chris slapped his ass right in front of Victor. 

“Ugh, there are children here!” Yuri makes his disgust known as he enters as well.

“Says the person with a poster of Yuuri.” He sputters and then goes silent.

Yuuri just sighs and gets in the water. He tilts his head back on one of the nearby rocks and stretches to help loosen up his muscles. He turns his head a bit and catches sight of Victor and is momentarily caught off guard because of course Victor is naked they’re both in the onsen. He quickly adverts his eyes trying not to seem like he’d been staring. Not that any of them seem to have any shame about being naked, Chris in particular, it’s just it’s Victor. 

Chris leans over to him again and whispers. “You know he’s checking you out right?”

“What?” Yuuri turns to Chris and whispers back with as much control as he can manage. There’s no way he can try and sneak a look to confirm without being suspicious about it. 

“He’s also been asking about you, he hasn’t been discreet about it.” He gives him that mischievous grin that he dreads, it usually means Chris is up to something nefarious like when he took him out to celebrate his eighteenth birthday and got Yuuri completely wasted in France.

“Why are you telling me this?” He whispers back.

“Playing matchmaker is always fun, besides are you going to tell me the dozen odd posters you own mean nothing?”

Chris has practically draped himself on Yuuri while whispering in his ear and he spares a quick glance at Victor who seems to be pretending that he’s not curious about their whispering and close touching. He blushes in admiration of the view before he looks back at Chris.

“You’re not wrong.” Yuuri admits defeatedly.

“Just let me handle it.”

There’s a deep part of him that says under no circumstances should he let Chris handle his love life but honestly he could do worse on his own.

At dinner Yuuri ends up sitting next to Victor who is happy to ask him a dozen or so questions about himself which he answers as politely as he can even if he’s weirded out by how interested he is in Yuuri.

“Hey, I know we all have nationals to prepare for but I think it’d be a good idea to go out and do some tourist things, you know relax before we have to travel again and the stress of competition.” Victor suggests suddenly. “Yuuri, you could show us around Hasetsu, right?”

“I mean, if you guys want to? Hasetsu is a tourist area but we haven’t gotten as many visitors in the last few years and things have closed down, I’m not sure how much there’s really to show.”

He shrugs at the suggestion. Off-hand the only thing he can think of is the ninja castle besides the onsen and Ice castle, which they’ve already experienced. Luckily, Mari is listening in between dinner duties.

“Well, in that case, Hasetsu’s winter festival is in a few days. That’d be the best day to go out and do things, everyone’s going to have vendors set up and you can dress up.” 

Yuuri had completely forgotten the local winter festival would be happening while he was here, it’s not like he’d been in Japan to celebrate any festivities in the last few years.

“A festival! That sounds fun, let’s do that!” Victor nods enthusiastically, the other skaters get excited too at the mention of a festival.

“I don’t want to catch you slacking off in practice if you want to go to a festival!” Yakov immediately tells them.

“Yakov, don't be so negative, we’ll be fine.” Mila complains.

“We’ll see.”

The next day, there’s definitely less chaos with practice. The incentive of the festival must be keeping them from acting out too much in fear of Yakov’s wrath. 

Yuuri had been working on transitions and step sequences most of the morning when Celestino decided he needed to work on his quad salchow. After a couple of flops, he wished he hadn’t. Yuuri starts getting up from the ice from his last fall before the ice soaks his clothes when a pair of golden skates slide up and a hand reaches out.

“Need some help.” He looks up surprised at Victor’s appearance. He takes his hand and gets back on his feet.

“Thanks.” He’s getting used to all the touches from Victor, he’d never thought the man would be this touchy.

Victor smiles at him. “I could take a look at your salchow, if you want?” He offers. In the distance he sees Chris gesturing for him to take Victor’s offer and he bites his lip as he thinks of his response.

“I don’t mind.” 

Victor has him run through the jump again, and he stumbles on the landing but at least he doesn’t fall again. He circles back to Victor who asks him to hold the form he has on the take off of the jump and he uses gentle touches to correct his form.

“Your arms need to be a little tighter here and a bit more up, do you feel the difference?” Yuuri nods. “Alright try it again.”

The next jump is better and then Victor gives his critique again and they work on it for a few more jumps and Yuuri finds he’s landing it more consistently than he had been.

“Good, that’s much better!” Yuuri blushes at the praise.

“Victor!” Yakov gives a warning and he knows that Victor will have to get back to his own routine now that he’s helped him out.

“Ah, you should get back to yours, you don’t want Yakov to get mad and keep you from going to the festival.” Not that he wants him to stop, but he doesn’t want to get Victor in trouble.

“It would be a shame, yes. Would you mind taking a look at my step sequences?” Victor asks him instead of moving on.

“Are you sure? I’m sure that you don’t have much trouble with them.” He doesn’t want him to feel like he needs to return the favor.

“I don’t feel like they're the best they can be yet, besides they’re your specialty of course I want your opinion.”

So Yuuri yields to his request and watches him run through his step sequences and Victor runs through the part he feels troubled by the most so that Yuuri can see it better. He can see that something looks like it’s missing and he instinctively does the footwork himself to get a feel of it.

“Wow! You picked up that step sequence really fast!” Victor commends as he does it and the heat in his cheeks rise because it’s admittedly not the first time he’s done it before. Not that he’s going to tell Victor that he copies his routines in his free time to destress. Nope.

“It’s a habit, I have some background with dancing and ballet.” He explains it away.

“Oh, you must have been taught well. You can tell how it’s benefited your skating. Who taught you?” Victor inquires.

“Oh, Minako Okukawa, she’s taught me since I was little.”

Victor’s eyes widened in response. “Really? Didn’t she win the Benois de la Danse? That’s so cool!”

He’s surprised that Victor would know that but then he recalls that Yakov is married to ballerina Lilia Baranovskaya and he’s had his skaters train under her. They continue to work on Victor’s step sequences after that revelation and Yuuri determines that he needs to work on it off the ice and suggests they go to the dance studio later which he agrees to.

He goes off to tell Yakov and it turns out that his coach likes that idea and he informs the rest of his skaters that they will all be going to the dance studio for the afternoon. He hears Yuri complain about how he doesn’t want to do ballet and that he hates it, Yuuri chuckles a bit at that.

Yuri changes his mind somewhat when he finds that Yuuri will be joining them in the afternoon. He warns Minako through text that all the Russian skaters will be joining him this afternoon and she sounds a little too pleased about the matter. To be fair it’s been a while since she’s had consistent ballet classes of students to bend to her will. She will undoubtedly enjoy breaking the Russian skaters.

She jumps into what Yuuri refers to as her “possessed ballerina” mode when they arrive and she commands them all like they’re her puppets. Yakov is very pleased by her and his students not so much. He feels a bit bad about throwing them to her, like sheeps to a wolf but he’s able to help Victor work through the issue in his step sequence. By the end of practicing Yuuri feels pleasantly worked out being used to Minako’s workouts, the others are crying for the onsen when they get back.

The next few days continue where the morning starts with rink practice and then ends with the ballet studio in the afternoon. The other coaches think that going to the studio is a good idea, and they split the skaters into groups so that it opens up the space of the rink a bit and some of them go to the studio in morning and the rink in the afternoon. This means that everyone faces the wrath of Minako’s ballet and even Cao-Bin expresses to Yuuri that his ballet teacher is a ‘mad woman’ when it comes to teaching.

The morning of the festival comes and everyone is excited. They’re going to have a short morning for practice before the skaters will be allowed to ‘goof off’ as Yakov put it. Just as practice at the rink is coming to a close, Yuuri notices some commotion coming from the rental area.

“You guys aren’t supposed to be here!” That’s Yuuko’s voice in a familiar scolding tone.

“Mom! That’s not fair, you didn’t tell us professional skaters were here! We had to find out online! We live here, it’s outrageous!” He hears three little voices making complaints tell him all he needs to know, he’d mostly talked to the Nishigoris over video chat and seen them grow up through pictures and hadn’t physically seen them since they were babies.

Yuuri skates over to the rink edge and puts on his skate guards before stepping out.

“Yuuko, it’s alright. I’m sure they won’t mind.” Yuuri calls out to her.

“Yuuri!” Axel, Lutz, and Loop slip by their mother, yelling his name. “Is it true that Victor Nikiforov is here?”

“Who's asking?” Victor pops over to the rink edge and the girls shriek at his appearance.

“It’s Victor!”

“Now what’s going on with all the commotion?” Chris wanders over as well.

“And Christopher Giacometti!” They shout. Chris smiles and waves at them before calling out to the others.

“Hey guys, it seems like we have some skating fans to greet! Come over here!”

The girls are shrieking in delight at the appearance of all the skaters, in full otaku mode.

“These are Yuuko and Takeshi’s kids, they’re pretty big skating fans.” Yuuri tells the skaters.

“The biggest! My name’s Axel, and that’s Lutz and Loop.” They introduce themselves to the group of skaters, who exclaim remarks of adoration over their names.

Yuuri watches on as they ask the skaters dozens of questions, take photos, and request autographs from them. The girls are over the moon as they respond politely and take the time to do as they ask. Victor glances up over at him standing off to the side and smiles brightly at him, sending a wink while he listens to the Nishigori triplets. It makes him giddy.

The coaches stand off to the side, resigned to the fact that practice has basically ended as a result of the interruption. They watch to make sure their students don’t say anything stupid and talk amongst each other about their own plans to relax.

“Hey girls, we’re planning on going sightseeing and to the festival, would you like to come with us?” Someone suggests Yuuri's not sure who as he realizes that he’d zoned out and was only paying attention to Victor.

They let out an enthusiastic yes and everyone begins their cool down workout and afterwards heads back to the onsen to get changed out of their sweaty workout clothes and freshen up. Yuuri is the first one to be ready because he had the advantage of a private bathroom being attached to his room. He waits patiently for the other skaters to be ready. Victor is the first one to come out.

“Ah, are we the only ones?” Victor asks as he sees Yuuri.

“Yeah, it seems like everyone is taking their time getting ready?” He responds, questioning it, they’d agreed on a set amount of time it would take to get ready but there were no signs of the others being ready.

“That’s weird, normally I’m the last one. Everyone always complains to me that I’m making them late, especially Yura.” Victor tells him. “Now I get to be the one.” He jokes after thinking about it.

“I wonder what’s taking them?” Yuuri says after a few more minutes goes by and Victor shrugs.

“Drama? Gossip? That’s the usual excuse or at least that’s what Yakov says when we’re late.”

Yuuri chuckles because he knows exactly what Victor means by that, now having seen the Russian team's antics during practice. He had never expected that his idol would be so carefree and impulsive. Blatantly ignoring Yakov’s demands to put away his cellphone during practice or joining Mila in teasing their younger rinkmate just to see his indignant outrage.

“You and your rinkmates seem really close, you know?” Yuuri says to him.

“Yeah, I guess we are. Are you and your rinkmates close? I know your roommates with the one, Phichit Chulanont.” Victor snaps his fingers as he remembers the name.

“Phichit is my best friend, but I’m not really as close with the other skaters, they all have different coaches as well. Although, how did you know Phichit was my roommate?” There’s a pause as Yuuri thinks about it. He hadn’t mentioned Phichit’s name the only time he mentioned having a roommate at least he’s pretty sure.

“Ah!” Victor exclaims frozen in his spot and Yuuri looks at him strangely.

“What?”

“I may have social media-stalked you at some point and figured out who your roommate was?” He admits to Yuuri bashfully, cheeks pink and a hand covering his mouth as he turned his face away so Yuuri couldn’t see him.

Yuuri blushes in return. “Huh?” 

“I was admittedly curious about you, it’s the first time we’ve competed against each other and I didn’t know much about you. I happened to look at your followers and ended up looking at his Instagram and um-” 

Victor is embarrassed and sputtering, it’s adorable and makes his heart flutter. Yuuri can feel his brain crashing. Victor instagrammed stalked him because he was curious about Yuuri, Chris hadn’t been wrong at all. A sudden thought pops into his head about Chris seeing Yuuri’s posters on Phichit’s Instagram and terror fills him as he wonders how far Victor had scrolled.

A part of him had meant to tell Phichit to find and take down the post but honestly he’d been so distracted by, well, everything that he hadn’t texted Phichit since the first night they’d been in Hasetsu. 

“Um, Victor? Is the reason you know Phichit’s my roommate is because you saw-?” He can’t finish the sentence, because what if he didn’t see them, then he’d be giving it away.

“The posters?” He blurts out, but then slaps a hand over his mouth. Victor immediately tries to back track, although it’s definitely too late.

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want you to feel embarrassed or anything! I actually thought it was really cute! I never thought I could really inspire someone that much!” 

Yuuri knows he’s trying to be nice but that doesn’t stop the feeling of the need to apologize to him.

“You don’t have to say that, I know it’s a little weird-”

“No! Not at all, I’m actually flattered!” 

The two stand there blushing, trying to quell their own embarrassment over the situation. Noise from down the hall alerts them to the other skaters coming and they don’t have time to say anything else. They managed to calm down enough that they aren’t entirely red by the time their friends make it over to the main entrance. 

“Hey, sorry to keep you guys waiting!” Chris calls out and he sends them a wink. Yuuri suddenly wonders if he had stalled everyone else to give them time alone and now he wishes he hadn’t

“Yeah, let’s go.”

The triplets were waiting outside and had been playing with Vicchan. He stops to hook his dog up to his leash and they all head out into town for sightseeing. Yuuri spends a good chunk of time trying to subtly avoid talking to Victor by being busy playing tour guide.

The group eventually makes its way to where the main festival is taking place. There’s several vendor booths set up throughout the street selling things and hosting games and such. There’s also an area set up for a snow sculpture contest that takes place and a general area for kids to play in the snow.

“A snow sculpture contest? Can anyone just enter?” Sara asks enthusiastically once the triplets inform them about it.

“Yeah! We should all make one together! We’ll have a better chance of winning.” 

Despite that suggestion, Yuri splits off from the group telling them their ideas are dumb and that he’s going to make a tiger. He ends up getting very frustrated with his attempt at a snow tiger, which falls apart, and he slinks back over to the rest of the group and makes a half-assed attempt to cooperate again.

He ends up starting arguments with both JJ and Mila, which is what Yuuri will later point to as the initiating point of the snowball fight that starts. Yuri gets aggravated with the older skaters and grabs a handful of snow, compacting it together and launches it rather blindly towards the two. It ends up hitting Sara instead. Michele being ever chivalrous and protective throws one back and ends up hitting JJ. Despite claiming that he won’t retaliate, JJ ends up throwing one because Yuri nails him right in the face following that.

Mila hits Yuri at the same time he nails JJ in the face and Chris is all aboard the snow throwing train and immediately forgo any restraint and dumps an armful on Victor’s head while he’s busy trying to sculpt with the triplets. It all devolves into chaos at that point because they’ve involved the Nishigori triplets and that means everyone is a target. The girls are apparently ambush snowball fight experts. 

They drag in the unwilling participants Yuuri, Cao-Bin, and Georgi who very much did not want a snowball fight but now it’s survival of the fittest. Much to Michele’s dismay, his own sister is against him and he has to team up with JJ in order to combat snowballs from her own team up with Mila and Yuri. Chris and Victor are free range combatants in this fight, taking the triplets initiative of attacking everyone.

Somewhere along the lines, Yuuri accidently gets Victor right in the face- he’d been aiming for Chris- he’d turned just as it happened. A look of shock is on his face. Yuuri covers his mouth to stifle his laughter. It ends their earlier tension the second Victor decides to retaliate and arms himself with a snowball to throw at Yuuri. They end up chasing each other around until a cease fire is called.

Everyone is soaked from the snow and laughing at each other. It an attempt to ward off the chill of the wetness they head over to a nearby stand selling hot chocolate. Yuuri stands next to Victor as he sips on the hot beverage, glancing at him every so often. Victor is doing the same. They’re both still nervous and looking at how to talk to each other.

“Oh! What are these?” Georgi exclaims as he looks to the vendor set up next to the hot chocolate stand. They have several displays of Kimonos being sold to festival go-ers, which is what has caught his attention.

“Those are Kimonos, sometimes people wear them for the festival but you can just wear regular clothes too.” Yuuri stops to explain to him. Georgi eyes them, contemplating something and then turns back to him.

“Is it okay for me to buy and wear one, or would that be weird?” He asks Yuuri.

“Ah, no it’d be fine if you wanted to. You might need help putting it on if you’ve never worn one before. If you do want to, I’ll help.” He offers to Georgi and the man nods back.

“I will, hey guys do you want to wear kimonos too?” 

The other skaters find the idea enticing and join Georgi in picking out Kimonos for themselves, with the help of Yuuri who can translate and figure out the minor details. Victor meanders nearby while he helps everyone before approaching him.

“Hey Yuuri, would you help me pick out a Kimono?” He hesitates a bit, wondering if it’s still too weird between them.

“Sure.” There’s a feeling of relief between the two and they start looking through the racks. They show each other a few choices before dismissing them and then Yuuri picks up a white one covered in a pink cherry blossom pattern and he holds it up to Victor.

“I like it.” Victor agrees and then spots something on the racks. He reaches over and pulls off a soft blue version of the Kimono. “So we can match!” He holds it in front of Yuuri to imagine how it would look. “It fits perfectly!”

“Sure.” Yuuri blushes as he replies softly.

They go over to purchase the kimonos and Victor swipes his card for both of them, not letting Yuuri get a word in edgewise. “Just let me, as a thank you for helping everyone.” 

He gives Yuuri these big pleading puppy dog eyes and he can’t really say no, so he sighs in defeat while watching Victor complete the transaction.

The group heads back to the onsen to change quickly so that they can head back out to the festivities. Yuuri is the last one to get ready this time because he was busy helping everyone else get into theirs.

“Let’s get a group photo!” Chris declares once they’re all together.

Hiroko volunteers to take the photo for them, all the while telling them how nice they look. Victor stands behind Yuuri for the photo and leans against him pulling him into a hug smiling happily at the camera. In between takes Victor turns to whisper in his ear.

“I told you we’d look good together.” He can’t really trust himself with his words so he just gives a hum of agreement.

They head back out and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening checking out the different vendors, trying food and playing the games. Victor at some point had grabbed his hand and decided that he was going to just hold it while they walked around trying different things, only breaking the contact to occasionally do an activity that needed both hands. After they would finish with whatever, his hand would reach back to Yuuri’s immediately.

The experience was a dream come true honestly. Yuuri thinks as they head off to finish the evening with the festival's planned fireworks.

“Ah, it looks like Yura finally won that stuffed tiger.” Victor points out, as the young skater re-emerges after hunkering down at a booth earlier, determined to win it. It’s nearly as big as him and as Yuuri sees it he knows he’ll have to help him ship it back to Russia because it’d be difficult to bring it back by plane.

“Look at my tiger, it’s awesome!” Yuri proudly boasts about his prize, showing it to Mila and Georgi, who compliment his tiger.

The fireworks start soon after and they watch them, still holding hands. Chris gives them a nod, grinning as he walks by. Victor squeezes his hand as he does. Glancing over at him.

Everyone heads back to the onsen, tired from being at the festival all day. The other skaters opt to head directly back to their rooms while Yuuri and Victor hang back, waiting for everyone to disappear.

“I really had fun today with you, I know that things got a bit weird this morning, but I really meant what I said earlier.” Victor starts off, he’s still holding Yuuri’s hand, squeezing it.

“I know, I’m just still a little embarrassed by the fact that you saw the posters.”

Victor reflexively brushes a few strands of hair away from Yuuri’s face, letting his hands caress his face lightly.

“I probably have more embarrassing photos from my teenage infatuation with Stéphane Lambiel, Yakov still threatens me with them occasionally.”

They burst into a fit of laughter that they try to stifle in order to avoid catching the notice of their friends. It takes a few minutes for them to get it under control.

“I really want to get to know more about you though.” He reiterates his point.

“We can go to my room and talk more if you want?” Yuuri suggests to him.

They quietly sneak down the halls to the family area of the onsen and make their way to Yuuri’s room. Vicchan had abandoned them earlier for the warmth of his bed and was snoozing away, having half tucked himself under the covers. Victor glances around and notices the bare walls.

“Awe, did you take the posters down? I really would’ve liked to see the rest.”

“You cannot, they’re hidden.” No matter how much Victor gives him that pleading look he will not be revealing their location.

Eventually Victor determines that Yuuri will not budge on the matter and they delve into asking each other questions. It seems like neither of them actually want to stop talking, the later it gets and they just sit on his bed trying to talk more, grasping at whatever thoughts cross their minds.

Yuuri doesn’t know when they actually fell asleep but when he wakes up they’re slumped over from their original sitting positions and his head laying on Victor’s chest, who is clinging to him like an octopus. His phone is at least connected to his charger and is within reach. He tries not to disturb Victor as he reaches for it, they still have some time before they need to get up once he checks the time.

There’s thousands of notifications from the SNS posts everyone made while enjoying the festival yesterday, he swipes those away. Phichit had texted him again, sputtering over the group photo and several other photos, demanding updates. He opens up Instagram and scrolls through all the photos everyone posted and he notices that him and Victor definitely looked close throughout. Victor had posted several of Yuuri as well, gushing in the captions.

Victor is lightly snoring in his ear and he’s trying not to think too hard about how close they are now. He likes several of the posts and leaves some comments, then pulls up Phichit’s texts and sends him a single shrugging emoticon, knowing it’ll send his friend into a spaz. The reaction is immediate.

“ _NO! NO SHRUGGING EMOJI! EXPLAIN! NOW!”_

“ _I WILL SHOW UP AT NATIONALS AND EMBARRASS U!”_

_“ANSWER UR PHONE!”_

He’s not really sure how to explain it over text and the actual explanation is very long, so he just decides to send a condensed version.

“ _Chris saw my posters in the background of one of your insta posts and then decided to play matchmaker. Victor may have also seen it and is somehow not magically creeped out.”_

There’s a decent amount of silence on Phichit’s end of the conversation and he watches as the dots signaling Phichit’s typing disappear and reappear.

“ _Obviously, I have missed a lot.”_

_“I should have come. TELL CELESTINO I HATE HIM FOR NOT LETTING ME!”_

_“I COULD’VE HELPED. I COULD’VE GOTTEN SO MANY LIKES ON INSTA!”_

_“Btw, Sorry about the post, or not? IDK.”_

Yuuri begins to type again.

“ _You are forgiven.”_

_“Also, you had an exam. You weren’t even competing, of course he didn’t let you come.”_

_“And really?”_

Phichit Responds

“ _Yes. Really.”_

_“So have you proposed yet? Or are we going for a slow burn romance, where you guys take months to even kiss?”_

Normally he would never be so bold, but he also normally would be freaking out about Victor sleeping and cuddling him so he’s pretty sure his anxiety went out the window sometime he learned Victor knew about his posters, so he snaps a selfie clearly showing the man sleeping next to him. He immediately sent it to Phichit.

“ _ASDFGHJKL???”_

_“DID YOU ALREADY SLEEP WITH HIM?”_

He starts laughing at Phichit’s response and Yuuri tries to hold it in but his shaking wakes up Victor.

“What’s so funny?” Yuuri hears the sleep addled voice ask him.

“I was texting Phichit, he was very upset about being left out of this whole experience, so I sent him this.” He just hands the phone to Victor, who squints at the screen's brightness and then scrolls through the chat.

"Oh, this is cute. Send me this picture later.” Victor hands him back the phone and then begins feelings around the bed for his own phone and sees that it still has a bit of charge when he does find it.

Yuuri goes back to his text with Phichit so he can clear up the misconception.

 _“He just fell asleep in my bed, we spent most of last night talking. It’s only been a week._ ”

“ _He just woke up, talk later?”_

Yuuri sets aside his phone and turns to Victor.

“Morning, did you sleep okay? I didn’t think we’d fall asleep like that.” 

Victor shakes his head. “No, I slept fine. I think we should probably get up and beat everyone else to breakfast before we end up with questions.” 

Yuuri agrees and they get up with Victor slipping out to go change into his workout gear while Yuuri gets ready himself. They meet back up in the dining area and find that none of the other skaters or even the coaches show signs of getting up despite that this is the time everyone has been getting up.

“I think everyone else might be a bit hungover, the coaches tend to drink when they get together and I know some of the others were doing the same yesterday.” Victor whispers to him conspiratorially as they sit eating breakfast.

“Ah, yeah, Celestino is a lightweight. He won’t be up till noon. So much for morning practice.” He’s not too bothered by it, they’d been working hard so a little extra relaxation won’t hurt.

Yuri is the first of the other skaters to appear. He’s still a junior, so he’s not hungover just embracing the chance to sleep in. Mila and Sara appear after him, suspiciously giggling and whispering to each other, Yuuri suspects that they’re wearing each other's clothes and decides not to think about it too much. Chris appears after them and he is definitely hungover.

“I don’t think the others will be joining us anytime soon, I may have encouraged them into a drinking contest and they did not win.” 

Victor sighs at his friend. “They’ll at least learn not to drink with you after this.”

Mari sighs as she hears that when she walks by in the middle of handling onsen duties. “I guess I should tell Kaa-san to make her hangover remedy.” 

Yuuri is then surprised by a text from Yuuko.

“ _Hey, do you think the other skaters would be interested in helping teach a novice class today? A lot of people have been asking since they’ve been seeing the social media posts.”_

Considering how well the others had interacted with the triplets he figured it wasn’t too much of a stretch to ask.

“Do you guys want to help teach an ice skating class at the rink today?” Yuuri asks suddenly to the group sitting around the breakfast table.

“It’s been a while but those are always fun, what do you guys think?” Victor looks towards the others.

Yuri shrugs. “I guess.” Mila and Sara voice their agreement as well.

“Assuming I’m no longer hungover by then sure, it’s not like we’re getting in any practice today from the looks of things.” Chris says. “I’ll text the others, what time?”

“Let me ask, Yuuko.” Yuuri pulls up his phone again and texts. “ _They’re up for it, what time?”_

It takes a minute but he does get a quick response.

“ _3pm? School will be over by then and It’ll give me time to get word out to parents.”_

“Yuuko says three.” Chris nods and then begins typing away while Yuuri responds as well.

“ _3pm is good!”_

“ _Alright! See you guys then!_ ”

Yuuri spends some time helping out around the onsen while the others slowly slink out from their rooms. The coaches quickly agree to their plans with helping out at the ice rink and wave them off so that they can suffer their hangovers in silence. The other skaters are quicker to recover due to their younger age and with a little help from Hiroko's hangover breakfast and tea. 

Once they’ve regained normal brain function, there’s some discussion about what they should show the novice class and they decide to head down around one o’clock in order to help with preparations and do some warm ups.

Despite the short notice, quite a number of people start showing up around a quarter to three o’clock. It ranges from elementary students to high school students, there are even a few young adults that Yuuri recognizes as old classmates of his. It’s weird that some of the people who used to think he was the weird one for ‘being obsessed with ice skating’ wanted to come meet the famous ice skaters. He guessed people changed with age.

They start off showing the new skaters how to properly tie their skates and get them to keep their balance. Once they manage to get everyone away from relying on the rink wall and managing to somewhat stop on their own accord, that’s when they start to show off doing some step sequences and spins.

Yuuko comes skating over to Yuuri with an excited look on her face. “Hey, Yuuri, do you think we can still do the lift? I know we haven’t done it in a while but I kind of want to do it again and Takeshi is always afraid he’ll drop me if he does it.”

The two of them had done a lot of pair skating for fun when they were younger despite never competing in any pairs competition. Yuuri was surprisingly never scared about doing some of the more riskier parts, mostly because they had a strong sense of trust between them.

“Yeah, let’s do it.” The two do a little warm up and practice their form and grip off to the side while the others are distracted by the current antics of the Russian team. Once they’re comfortable with it, they get ready to do it in front of the others.

“Hey guys watch this!” Yuuko calls out just moments before Yuuri pulls off a successful lift, he hears Takeshi making distressed noises off to the side about them not getting hurt and Yuuko giggles at her husband.

“Why do you two always have to scare me like that.” He complains once they’ve finished.

“Oh, hush. You know perfectly well Yuuri wasn’t going to drop me.” Yuuko chides her husband.

“Wow! Yuuri, I didn’t know you knew how to pair skate?” Victor skates over to him, his eyes practically sparkling in amazement.

“It’s not like at a professional level or anything though, it was something we did for fun as kids.”

Despite his attempts to downplay it, Victor is still very much in awe over it.

“Still, it’s something I haven’t done before. Can we do it? I want to try!” He pulls on his best pout, which Yuuri is quickly realizing he has no defenses against.

“If you want to, we can try I guess. We might end up just falling over mostly.” Yuuri warns him.

“Even then, it’d be a fun experience.”

Yuuri just gives up on trying to talk Victor out of the idea and he finds himself walking Victor through the steps. They definitely end up on their asses the first few times because Victor is taller than him but they manage to get the hang of it. The others have caught on to what they’re doing and Michele tries to get Sara to do the same but she quickly shuts him down. Mila straight up sneaks behind Yuri and lifts him up, causing him to scream in fright and demand to be let down. Once he does get down, he chases after her yelling.

Any semblance of a skating class is lost not long after that but the people were more interested in interacting with famous skaters than the actual class for the most part. They offer to sign some autographs and slowly the crowd disappears from the ice rink as the session ends. When they’re packing up, Chris gets a notification on his phone.

“My coach just texted that our flights have been rescheduled for tomorrow.”

Everyone stops getting their gear together to look at their phone and suddenly Yuuri finds that he’s really disappointed. He’s admittedly one of the most introverted skaters but he’s really enjoyed the last week, hanging out with all the other skaters. Especially Victor. He has no idea what’s going to happen now that they’ll all be leaving tomorrow.

The announcement brings a sour feeling to the end of the evening. They continue to pack up their things, a bit slower than they had been before. They take a moment to stand around, looking at each other to see who will move first.

“Hey, my mom is probably making everyone a big dinner, since you’ll all be leaving tomorrow.” Yuuri decides that it’s best he ends the silence.

Everyone perks up at the thought.

“Ugh, I’m gonna miss the food. Yuuri, is there any way we can clone your mom?”

“I’m going to miss the hot springs!”

“I’m going to miss the alcohol.”

“Holy shit, did Cao really just say that?”

“Listen, the hangover was worth it.”

Dinner is full of light hearted laughter and conversation despite the bittersweet tone. Yuuri’s mom definitely tries to feed them more than they can eat and they stall sitting around the table until the coaches remind them that they need to pack. Yuuri is the only one who won’t be leaving because Japan’s Nationals are too close to leave now. He stays behind in the dining area to help clean up with Mari.

Everyone packs pretty quickly and Yuuri, as predicted, ends up taking Yuri Plisetsky’s address so that they can ship back the stuffed tiger. Everyone stays up to talk for a little while until the coaches check in and they all have to depart for their room and bid goodnight.

Yuuri decides that he’ll take the train with everyone in the morning to make sure that they make it to the airport without any issues. Everyone is rather grumpy in the morning from the early hour that they had to wake up at but they manage to get in one last group photo before they head to the train station.

On the train, Victor sits next to Yuuri, invading his personal space in the way he’s starting to become accustomed to. His head lays on Yuuri’s shoulder as he struggles to break through his morning grogginess.

“Hey Yuuri?” Victor whispers into his ear, it sends a shiver down his spine.

“Yeah?” He whispers back.

“Say if we’re both at worlds in March, would you like to go on a date?”

The question thrills him.

“I would.”

“Then, unless circumstances intervene, it’s a date.”

The two of them may take a bit longer to say goodbye than the others do at the airport. If the others, with the exception of Chris who is miming kisses at them, notices they don’t say anything. Yuuri watches everyone go through the airports to their gates until he no longer can see anyone.

He sighs, all alone now, and decides to stop to grab some morning breakfast that he’d skipped due to the early hour, he has the time before the next train. Notifications ding on his phone and he pulls up Instagram to check that the others have posted pictures of themselves waiting at their flight gate or sitting in their airplane seat already with captions of thanks and similar sentiment.

Victor posts a picture he’d taken of the sunrise when they were leaving Yuu-topia captioned with:

 ** _V-nikiforov_** _I guess I’m leaving my heart in Hasetsu, it was a wonderful stay @Katsu-Yuu._

Yuuri is pretty sure that the other customers look at him weird with the noise he makes but he doesn’t care. He likes the post after he spends a good time staring at it giddy.

When he makes it back to Hasetsu, he makes an Instagram post of his own.

[ _Picture of Vicchan standing in the front entrance of Yuu-topia looking out the open door from behind._ ]

 ** _Katsu-Yuu_** _Someone is missing our guests, who left to prepare for their own nationals this morning! I’m glad everyone was happy to stay with us despite the circumstances, fly safe! @V-nikiforov @Christophe-gc @Mila-Babi @Sala-crispino_ _@mickey-crispino @georgi-pop @yuri_plisetsky @Jjleroy!15 @Cao-Bin_

 **_V-nikiforov_ ** _: Oh no! Tell Vicchan we love him!_

 ** _Christophe-gc_** _:_ _The poor baby, he doesn’t understand. Dogs are too good for us, we’ll be back!_

 ** _Mila-Babi_** _:_ _How do I tell the pilot that we need to turn around without sounding crazy?_

 **_Sala-crispino:_ ** _@Mila-Babi Just show him, he’ll skip the airport and land in Hasetsu, everyone will understand._

 **_Georgi-pop:_ ** _Are dogs allowed at the world championships @ISUOffical? I need to know. This is important. #Ipromise_

 **_V-nikiforov_ ** _: @Georgi-pop Shh! We’ll just smuggle him in, I’ll bring Makka and make it a #doubledate!_ _😉_

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed it!  
> Bonus Content: Yuuri was too busy to notice everyone else's side shenanigan's that happen. Including Christophe getting mostly everyone else drunk so that Sara could go sneak off with Mila. Phichit suffers because he can only learn updates through SNS because Yuuri won't look at his phone. 
> 
> Check out my Tumblr: TheScribblerQueen


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